


we'll have some fun if it stops raining

by missi



Category: Addams Family (1991)
Genre: F/F, F/M, hello muddah hello faddah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:30:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missi/pseuds/missi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wednesday's letter just says, "Pink strawberry scented paper isn't a good start. India ink for an hour in your hair."</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'll have some fun if it stops raining

**Author's Note:**

  * For [halotolerant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/gifts).



Wednesday and Joel are only twenty when they open Camp Woebegone, a marvelously rundown, rickety, wretched thing of a summer campground on the other side of the island that also houses the former Camp Chippewa site. They figure if they take only kids half their size until they're older, they'll do okay. Unfortunately, neither of them is taller than 5'8", even once they're thirty, so it's an elementary summer camp. Pugsley and Uncle Fester run the boys' side, and Margaret and Dementia run the girls' side. Counselors are always volunteers from the local juvenile detention center. The Addams mansion isn't all that far away, so Morticia often sends Thing and Lurch over with the kind of homecooked meals Wednesday can't get even the cooks at Woebegone to make her.

  
On the other side of the island, two years after Camp Woebegone opens, Amanda builds Camp Sereine in the ashes of Camp Chippewa, aided by devoted husband NJ. They cater exclusively to wealthy clientele, and approximately three quarters of their campers are pissed off every year that they're at camp and not at their summer house in the Hamptons. Amanda can sometimes feel their pain, but she's a little surprised at it from seven-year-olds. She was at least eleven before she was ever pissed not to be at her summer house, at least as far as she can remember. The Buckmans hate the whole thing, which is probably why she opened the camp in the first place. She likes it, though, this whole place is hers, and what she says goes. Always.

  
\--

  
When she's sixteen, Wednesday receives a pink strawberry scented envelope in the mail, addressed to her in bubbly curliques, and she can feel Thing's disbelief when he delivers it to her door. It's from Amanda, like, Amanda from camp, and she wonders how Amanda even got her address before she wonders why she's writing to her. She slides a dagger from her right boot and opens the letter, and it's two paragraphs of girly rage about why parents suck and can Wednesday tell her how to be a goth because she wants to, she feels it.

  
(What she wants to do is rebel against her parents, who have denied her wish to finish high school in Paris. She's already scratched the hell out of their fender, she wants to do some real public damage.)

  
Wednesday's letter just says, "Pink strawberry scented paper isn't a good start. India ink for an hour in your hair."

  
Amanda's rebellious period lasts six weeks, until she's named Homecoming Queen, but it takes the stylist six months to fix her hair. She doesn't write to Wednesday again.

  
Morticia invites Amanda to Wednesday's graduation seance after she finds the letter tucked into a corner of Wednesday's vanity mirror. She includes a plane ticket. Wednesday doesn't have many friends other than Pugsley and NJ.

  
Mrs Buckman sends Amanda to the Addams mansion with enough money to cover the ticket, but she uses it to buy a new bag at the airport, she can't believe her mother is making her attend anyway. After the seance, she's complaining about having to be here to an NJ clearly transfixed by her beauty while they stand near the suspiciously bubbling punch. NJ trips over nothing, nearly spills his cup on her arm, and Pugsley finds this to be an excellent opportunity to shove them both into the nail-lined cabinet conveniently to their right. Amanda's quiet for a minute, so NJ tells her his mother tried to keep him from coming. She rolls her eyes but kisses him anyway, something's going to go her way tonight.

  
\--

  
Wednesday refuses to marry Joel, but she likes him just fine. Their relationship is solid, and she trusts him, which isn't really true for most people. They borrow the money, a little bit each from their parents, to buy the campground. The site is familiar, not far from the horrid little house in which they'd been imprisoned, and it's merely a coincidence that it's across the island from the former Chippewa. Joel definitely does not piss on its ashes the first night.

  
They paint everything grey and because it's 2000, they advertise on Deadjournal. Later it's Buzznet, and so on and so forth, parents of rejects are actually kind of thrilled to find a place to send their kids for summer camp where they won't, well, be rejects. They pay the loan back after three years, but their parents insist on putting the money into a trust fund for the child they're really aren't ever going to have. They throw themselves into building their camp into the sort of place where a kid could feel like maybe he could roast his enemies' parents on a spit, and it would be just fine.

  
They all it Camp Woebegone.

  
When Wednesday tells NJ once that running a camp is like doing whatever you want and answering to no one for the rest of your life, he convinces Amanda to ask her parents for the money to buy the Chippewa site, and she can run whatever kind of camp she likes. She wants to run, in her words, "exactly the opposite of whatever she's running." She's not a huge fan of Wednesday and NJ's friendship, despite the presence of Joel. NJ generally just lets it go, he's that kind of guy. He doesn't let her call it Camp Sunshine and Rainbows, though, and suggests Sereine, tells her it's French. He knows here isn't Paris, but she doesn't want to go there now anyway.

 

Amanda and Wednesday have breakfast once a week during the offseason. It feels like this sort of polite thing, though it's anything but, insults and sarcasm and glowing cheeks. They only see each other during the Opening and Closing Sessions during camp. They don't attend the Camp Wars, Joel and NJ run those. Wednesday uses the time to prune her cemetary roses and call her mother. Amanda uses the time to fertilize and till her own rose garden and also call her mother.

 

\--

 

Wednesday's eyes go wide when Amanda steps up to her before the seance, the two of them hidden just behind a pillar, it's the first time she's seen her since she'd tortured her so sweetly, and she's so much taller now, perfectly honeyed and styled blonde hair tucked behind her ears. They go wider when Amanda closes her eyes determinedly and leans in to press her lips to Wednesday's shocked-open own. Wednesday closes her eyes for the briefest second but pulls away, isn't that her mother calling? She doesn't look back. She does, however, arrange for Pugsley to lock Amanda in the cabinet with NJ.

 

\--

 

The truth is that Amanda isn't mad now, but sometimes Wednesday is wistful. It's usually right around those times that Amanda calls her Mrs Glicker, and she isn't wistful at all, just off on a tirade, and Amanda gestures for the waitress to bring more coffee. Wednesday waits years before she tells Amanda about Joel's first night back at the Chippewa site, but Amanda just turns it back on her, asks about Joel's junk in the moonlight, and Wednesday chokes on her coffee, pushes Amanda from the seance back to the back of her mind where she goes. She tells Amanda that she has absolutely no clever retort about NJ because she doesn't want to know, and she can't imagine it's changed much since they were twelve.


End file.
